Kickstarter Updates Terms of Use Mainly for Project Creators

Leon Hitchens

3 years ago

Kickstarter has labeled itself as a middleman or platform that allows crowdfunding to occur, and they have stayed away from enforcing creators from fulfilling their campaigns promises. I’ve seen and participated in projects which have failed to complete their projects or they have greatly delayed the shipping date they have originally set. The company changed and simplified the language their terms of use was written in, now the terms of use is straightforward and easy for backers and creators to understand.

Kickstarter isn’t enforcing or guaranteeing that any project will be completed or backers will get what they have been promised for their pledged. Now the company does consider the backers and creators relationship to be a legally binding contract, which means if they don’t complete or fulfill the rewards to the project the backers or Kickstarter could take legal action against the creator of the project.

“If a creator is unable to complete their project and fulfill rewards, they’ve failed to live up to the basic obligations of this agreement. To right this, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to the best possible conclusion for backers,” reads the updated document.

The updated document will mean that backers should get more transparent updates from creators along the process. If there is a hickup backers will be updated with where their money is going to in order to continue the project completion. These new terms go into affect on Oct. 19, 2014. All projects launched on the date or after will have to comply with the new terms in order to use the growing crowdfunding platform.

“This update reflects the best practices we’ve seen from our community to get the best possible outcomes from challenging situations. Incorporating them into these terms is a small but important part of building a healthy, trusted environment where people work together to bring creative projects to life,” said Yancey Strickler, CEO and co-founder of Kickstarter, in a post on the company’s blog.